Table of Contents: December 2006

Image Credit: Cover design by Natalie Davis, Public Library of Science, with images taken from Pogue-Geile et al.

A germline mutation in the palladin gene associated with familial pancreatic cancer causes abnormal distribution of the cytoskeletal palladin protein in transfected cells, as shown here. The research article by Pogue-Geile et al. reports the identification of the mutation in a large kindred with pancreatic cancer, as well as the findings that palladin is overexpressed in sporadic pancreatic cancers and that cells expressing the mutant protein have an increased ability to migrate.